The present invention relates to means for the interface contact of a liquid and a gas and the invention has particular utility in the liquid-gas heat exchange and mass transfer art.
There are many different types of cooling towers such as, for example, the atmospheric open type in which the water to be heated or cooled is sprayed over a structure open to the atmosphere and the chimney type in which the cooling is carried out within an enclosed space with the cooling medium being supplied by natural, induced or forced draft. The draft may be horizontal or vertical and the liquid to be cooled or heated is allowed to pass downwards in such a manner as to present a large surface area to contact with a countercurrent or crosscurrent of the cooling or heating gas, usually air. The air may enter at the bottom of the tower for countercurrent cooling or may be caused to enter the side of the tower where crosscurrent cooling is employed.
In cooling towers it will be apparent that the greater the surface area of a given body of water presented to the cooling air, the more efficient will be the cooling of the water and the attainment of large surface area to volume ratios for the water has been achieved in the prior art in different ways.
For example, large surface areas per unit volume of water have been attained by causing the water to flow downwards as a film over continuous supporting elements thus presenting a large surface area to the current of air. The supporting elements have been stacked together to form what is known in the art as a film-flow packing or fill. In order to support such packing, the interior of the towers were provided with extensive and costly supporting beams to support layers or modules of the filling or packing which supporting beams extend upwardly above the topmost fill and then provide the support for the pipes and spray heads for directing water onto the fill and also the drift eliminators positioned above the piping.
It has also been known to corrugate or place in wave form filling sheets, particularly those of plastic and assemble such sheets into groups, however, while surface area was thus increased, uneven flow of liquid often resulted due to capillary action of the liquid in zones of all lines of contact between the sheets.
It is, therefore, a principal object of the present invention to provide fill or packing for gas and liquid contact apparatus formed from a plurality of extended surface planar sheets which are warped during assembly and maintained in wave form patterns which wave form patterns materially increase the strength of the assembly thereby permitting assembled units or modulars to be stacked one upon the other and to support at the upper end of the fill piping and the like for directing the liquid to be cooled to the fill and to also support drift or mist eliminators.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such modular fill wherein a plurality of sheets are assembled into a unit or modular with no line contact between adjacent sheets to thereby reduce channeling of the cooling liquid and to thereby improve the surface flow of the liquid to be cooled or treated.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a fill assembly formed of relatively thin material which attains its rigidity by being placed in a wave form pattern by a combination of through bolt and spacer assemblies.